A mining company's application to extend a coal mine in Carmarthenshire, Wales, has been rejected by the local county council, in what campaigners say is another death knell for opencast coal mining in the country.
The council's planning committee unanimously supported a proposed rejection of the plans by council officers.
It will be the second council in Wales to call time on further coal extraction this year, after the Ffos y Fran opencast coal mine was ordered to close in Merthyr.
Bryn Bach Coal, which almost four years ago applied to extend its Glan Lash mine by a further 10 hectares, had proposed to extract 95,038 tonnes of coal over six years.
With the proposals resulting in the loss of fields, hedgerows and a 'wet woodland', the company had submitted a 10-year habitat restoration plan, including tree-planting.
A Carmarthenshire council representative said a refusal of the application was recommended due to insufficient information that the restoration would protect or enhance the priority habitats of moor grassland and woodland, which the council had a duty to protect.
Local objections
Carmarthenshire County Council said it had received over 800 objections from people living in the area, with around 50 of these local opponents and environmental campaigners gathering on the steps of the Carmarthenshire County Hall ahead of the planning meeting, according to local media.
Magnus Gallie, a planning specialist at Friends of the Earth, said: “We are in a nature as well as a climate emergency. As the ecologist’s report makes clear, digging up this coal would have been a serious threat to wildlife and biodiversity in Carmarthenshire.
“Coal extraction is damaging, even if it’s not being burned, because it releases harmful methane and adds to global coal supplies - lowering prices and attracting more demand."
He noted that Welsh government policy prohibits the licensing and permitting of new coal mines, except in "wholly exceptional circumstances", as there are now alternatives to using coal in water filtration, and the application failed to meet these policy requirements.
“Councillors made the right decision today, sending out a strong message that Wales is a globally responsible nation,” he said.
The planning consultant representing Bryn Bach Coal told Wales Online the company was "surprised and disappointed" to find out that the application was being brought before the committee at this time, as a detailed response was in the process of being prepared to the ecological and habitat concerns raised by the council.
This would have been ready in early October, he said, and as the council was aware of this he urged the committee to defer the decision and said the company would appeal if councillors turned the application down.
End of an era for Wales?
With mining due to end in Merthyr's Ffos y Fran in November, Friends of the Earth said the decision to stop further coal extraction at Glan Lash is "another clear signal that the era of opencast mining in Wales is coming to an end".
However, two campaign groups are taking recourse to legal action to force the closure of Ffos-y-Fran as "the local council and Welsh Ministers have failed to do so".
The opencast mining site was ordered to close after 15 years in April, having originally supposed to shut last September when its planning permission first expired, but with more than 200,000 tonnes of coal having since been extracted.